Monthly Archives: August 2005

I guess that’s our theme for tonight: context, perspective, history. You’re all aware of the efforts by various flaky leftists to blame Hurricane Katrina on “global warming,” etc. Put aside for a moment the extent to which the current warming trend on Earth is related to human activities, as opposed to increased energy production by the Sun and other natural cycles. It doesn’t take a physicist to figure out that »

If you believed what you read in newspapers and hear on television, you would think that the Bush administration has been one long period of economic decline. In particular, every time the Census Bureau releases a report, a spate of negative news stories follows. This happened today, when the Census Bureau delivered “Income, Poverty and Health Insurance in the United States: 2004,” available here. The New York Times headlined the »

Earlier today there was a report that Senator Chuck Hagel had telephoned Cindy Sheehan to offer his support for her anti-Bush jihad. Now, Right Wing News seems to have the whole story. In her “last post from Crawford,” Sheehan offered thanks to a list of lefty politicians who “either came to CC, or called me to offer their support and love.” Hagel was on the list. John Hawkins wondered about »

The Claremont Institute is coming to Washington, D.C. Beginning tomorrow and extending through Saturday, it is putting on nine panels on an assortment of political issues. Most of the events will take place at the Wardman Park Marriott hotel. Here is the schedule. These panels are part of a larger get-together, the annual meeting of the American Political Science Association. I will participate on two panels. The first (tomorrow at »

An entertaining sideshow to the Roberts confirmation process is the descent into near intellectual incoherence of some of America’s most distinguished law professors. Duke University’s Erwin Chemerinsky takes his turn today. He argues that Democrats should oppose Roberts because having Roberts on the bench would likely change the law. Under that approach, constitutional law would never change unless Congress incorrectly guessed the views of nominees. Our “living Constitution” itself would »

The Pew Research Center has published an interesting survey on the political parties and religion. The finding that is getting the most press is that only 29% of respondents view the Democrats as religion-friendly, down from 40% just a year ago. In general, the public seems to view the parties and their attitudes toward religion as mirror images. Almost exactly equal numbers think the secular anti-religion forces have too much »

Last month I wrote that, in Cindy Sheehan, the left has “a new horse to ride for a while.” That “while” may be drawing to a close. Bill Sammon in the Washington Times reports that “powerful liberal advocacy groups such as MoveOn.org are taking a less active role in Cindy Sheehan’s anti-war activities.” Sammon’s piece suggests that it is Sheehan’s camp that is moving away from MoveOn.org in order to »

The Louisiana flood of 1927 lives on in song (Randy Newman’s “Louisiana 1927″ being only the most recent), but seems largely to have been forgotten. As we struggle to deal with the greatest of our natural disasters, now may be the time to recall what was our greatest natural disaster until then. Events of the day bring to mind John Barry’s 1998 book Rising Tide: The Great Mississippi Flood of »

Captain Ed Morrissey continues compiling the evidence omitted from the 9/11 Commission report. In his Daily Standard column today, he provides a summing up: “Accounting for the final report.” Also at the Standard is Wesley Smith’s column about the Washington debate over bestiality: “Horse sense.” »

A new report by the Center for Immigration Studies analyzes the immigration histories of the 94 known foreign-born terrorists who operated in the United states between 1993 and 2004. The Center’s conclusion: “[T]wo-thirds of them committed immigration fraud prior to or as part of their terrorist activities.” Twenty-one of the terrorists became naturalized citizens before being charged or convicted as terorists. It can hardly be a surprise that a key »

Terry Eastland has just the right take on the Roberts nomination when he says, “Judge Roberts represents precisely the kind of nominee you’d expect from the president of the party shaped by Mr. Reagan.” And given the success of the party as Reagan shaped it, the Democrats have little hope of defeating Roberts, and no basis for claiming that his utterances supporting the Reagan administration’s legal thinking show him to »

Between being down much of the day and having nothing original to add to the excellent coverage being done elsewhere, we haven’t talked about Hurricane Katrina today. The Associated Press has the latest, including reports of widespread looting in New Orleans. The Times-Picayune’s breaking news feed is here. (Via Hugh Hewitt.) This photo is one of many that show the hurricane’s power: The scale of the disaster in Mississippi and »

She doesn’t get much attention from the MSM, but Secretary of the Interior Gale Norton is one of my favorite cabinet members. Under her innovative leadership, the Department is advancing “cooperative conservation,” an approach that centers on partnerships between the federal government and state governments, Tribes, community organizations, and individual citizens. For more than 30 years, environmental protection has tended to revolve around federal regulation. This approach has led to »

We’ve been unavailable for much of the day, as our hosting service, Hosting Matters, has periodically been down. I think the problems were caused by the hurricane. Power Line News is hosted separately and was up all day. Once we get the new breaking news feed operational–tomorrow, I think–we’ll start working on adding a whole new functionality that will be a first on the web (or anywhere). If it works. »

In March 2005, after five years of procedural wrangling, the First Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed a judgment entered againt the PLO and the Palestine Authority in favor of the estate, survivors and heirs of Efrat Ungar in the amount of $116 million. The First Circuit’s decision is accessible here. Ramsey Clark and others represented the PLO/PA defendants. The claims resulted from the murder of Ungar and his wife by »